New Johnny's Restaurant serves meat-and-three in downtown Homewood

The menu board at the new Johnny's Restaurant in Homewood features meat, vegetables, daily specials and desserts. (Beth Hontzas Photography)

HOMEWOOD, Alabama -- Talk about your culinary bloodlines.

Tim Hontzas has 'em.

His uncle Gus Hontzas ran Niki's West Steak & Seafood Restaurant on Finley Avenue for more than 30 years, and after he died in 2001, his sons (and Tim's cousins) Pete and Teddy Hontzas took over their father's business.

"They are my second cousins, but we call one another brothers," Tim Hontzas says. "We are very close."

"That's where I cut my teeth," the 40-year-old Hontzas says. "I'm self-taught. I have a psychology degree from Ole Miss, but this is what I love to do, and he took me under his wing and showed me a lot."

Hontzas also served apprenticeships under chefs Earling Jensen at his eponymously named restaurant Earling Jensen in Memphis and under Chris Nason at the Sapphire Grill in Savannah.

So with that lineage, it should come as no surprise that, while Hontzas' new Johnny's Restaurant in Homewood boasts a chalkboard menu that includes such Southern staples as black-eyed peas, collard greens, mashed potatoes and fried catfish, it is not your typical meat-and-three lunch spot.

"People ask about this cuisine, and I say it's Southern cuisine with Greek influences," Hontzas says. "We make homemade pastisio, the Greek lasagna, and we make pork souvlaki that we marinate for 36 hours."

Another branch in the Hontzas family tree

Although related to the Hontzas family of restaurateurs in Birmingham, Tim Hontzas grew up in Jackson, Miss., and only moved here a few years ago while his wife, Beth, was working as a staff photographer for Southern Living.

"I wanted to fill the niche of the Anchorage," Hontzas says. "With the Anchorage not being here, there is no meat-and-three here anymore."

The restaurant is named after Hontzas' grandfather, longtime Jackson, Miss., restaurant owner Johnny Hontzopolous, a Greek immigrant whose own Johnny's Restaurant was a Jackson institution from the 1950s into the 1980s.

"They said he was way before his time and then he let time pass him by because he was so hard-headed he would not change his menu to accommodate the times," Hontzas says. "But it was a pretty big deal in Jackson at the time."

One of the walls of Hontzas' restaurant is decorated with black-and-white photos of "my papou," as he calls his late grandfather, along with a framed menu from the original Johnny's Restaurant in Jackson.

Hontzas also has adopted his grandfather's motto, which is written above the service window that connects the kitchen and the front counter.

"We prepare food for the body," it says, "but good food to feed the soul."